Let’s Turn This Bucket Around

The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservatives” was only to retard that process.)

I’m fascinated by this notion that we do sometimes pass laws and therefore that means that we should pass laws. The resistance to passing laws is some nasty dysfunction caused by a nefarious interest group — here, the NRA — but good people want to do something.

My comment to her post follows:

I’m fascinated by how the Left has so successfully and deeply entrenched everyone, even non-Lefties, into default “boxes” of thought without anyone noticing.

Well, anyone minus one, as I did notice it. EJ Dionne’s presumed range of options is to either pass more laws or to do nothing.

Completely left out is a third option: repeal laws.

Am I wrong? Not Althouse or anyone in this thread seems to have noticed; search “repeal” on this page and there’s one comment with that word in it, and it’s a reference to Prohibition.

Leftists’ entire political worldview rests on that unstated premise: laws only ever get passed. Government control only ever expands, and “at worst” it stops growing.

It throws William F Buckley’s slogan “Standing athwart history shouting Stop!” into a new light, doesn’t it?

It should be clear that we’ve reached a pass where conservatism’s professed goal, even if they adhered to it 100% (which, quite pathetically, they don’t) — to be a brake on history — has failed, as it must fail.

A brake only slows you down; it does not change your direction. We don’t need a brake anymore; we need an accelerator and a 180.

Let’s turn this bucket around.

2 Comments so far ↓

Repeal, and put in place mandatory expiration dates on all legislation, ALL. If not renewed within a fixed period of time, then it becomes null and void with those imprisoned by it set free upon expiration (drug laws?).

There will be a noticeable reduction in new laws passed since repassing of old things will consume time. We, as a nation/state/locality will be forced to prioritize what is important on a recurring basis.

Good luck to us all as we strive to improve on something that is good, but can be far better.

It is a terrible sickness of our era that people assume for every problem and tragedy in life that a new law must be made. There are many things in life – I would say most things – that the law cannot fix. Furthermore, attempts to defy this fact can and do cause great harm to the innocent.

National Security Workforce to Address ‘Intersectionality’: do you ever get the sense that you’re in a waking nightmare? Money quote from the memo: “Our greatest asset in protecting the homeland and advancing our interests abroad is the talent and diversity of our national security workforce.”

Last Week Tonight on Donald Trump: bit long, but great takedown of the Trump mythos. In a more rational political environment, this would have killed his presidential campaign. I’m not sure it’ll make any difference.

A Responsibility I Take Seriously: nominee must be “without any particular ideology or agenda” and have “a keen understanding that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook.” I sure hope the Republicans can hold the line on his nominations.

Trigger Warnings in Annapolis: I’m not sure why I expected the service academies to be bastions of academic freedom, but I did. It’s much worse than the universities since they’re far more hierarchical.

Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council: this is within their rights, of course. Given the leftist leanings of the company and its assembled Council of Goodspeech, I suspect that some groups will get a pass and some will face suppression. Chilling at any rate.